Chapter 40 – A Night Walk in the Woods

The farm written on the writ was located a few miles east of the town of Shining Gold, and it was late in the evening when it was reached.

The name of the owner of this farm was Stormir, and Jace couldn’t remember such a farm on the map, because Stormir meant vast lake in the common language, so many people called it the Giant Lake Farm.

This is despite the fact that there is nothing lake-related around here, and even the nearest river is seven or eight miles to the south.

In order to deal with the wolf, Jace brought that orc stick with him, after all, when dealing with beasts an inch is a mile long, and the wolf here is not a seat wolf, so he probably won’t be able to take more than a few hits, and using an axe would be too inflexible instead.

However, so that no learned person could see it, he wrapped it tightly in cloth not to reveal the color and material underneath.

With a sword in his hand and a bow on his back, the dwarf looked more like a professional gladiator than Jace’s street punk-like attire, and the two of them just strutted off in the direction of the farm.

The Giant Lake Farm wasn’t much of a farm, despite the bluff name, and on the surface wasn’t nearly as big as the one the two had infiltrated in the Twilight Forest, with the mill and granary looking a bit small.

Jace took a general survey of the size of the farm, and had the illusion that he could put up all the buildings and fences except for the human houses by himself.

“Hey, anybody?” The dwarf yelled out to the farm.

A man glanced sidelong this way from behind an erected bale of straw, and then suddenly drew up his legs and ran.

“What’s he running for?” Grid asked curiously.

Jace looked at him and then at himself and immediately yelled, “We’re not bandits! We’re here to help, Mr. Stormare!”

The man who was running away reached the midway point, looked back, and kept running again until he was inside the granary.

The two men went up after them to the side of the granary when the man suddenly charged out with a pitchfork in his hand, and Grid immediately blocked the middle of the pitchfork with his sword to the side and pressed the pitchfork into the dirt.

“We’re here to help you, what are you doing?”

“Get out!” The man gritted his teeth and said, “What’s the point of coming now?!”

Jess asked, “What happened?”

“My baby …… my baby is only four months old!” He glared at Jace and said, “She was taken by those wolves and I couldn’t even catch up with her!”

“When?” Jess asked.

“It was the day before yesterday.” The man said, “I don’t know how many times I’ve reported to the guards in Shining Gold that if you had come earlier and found those wolves it wouldn’t have been like this!”

“Why don’t you go find out for yourself first?” The dwarf asked.

“I can’t leave the farm.” The man was so anxious that he could barely speak, “My wife was bitten, I didn’t manage to kill a couple of wolves …… I can’t do anything right, I’m just a loser!”

When he finished speaking, he suddenly plucked at his pitchfork, missed, and turned to grab the dwarf’s sword; Jace rushed up and pinned him to the ground, and with an outrageous burst of strength the fuming man wrenched himself out of Jace’s grip at once, and collided with Grid, who had been caught off-guard.

The two men rolled several times in the broken grass, upturned weed stalks flying in the air, the man climbed up and was about to grab his sword again when it was already pointed at his neck.

“Rob again without the need for the wolf to move his mouth, I’ll send you to see your ancestors.” The dwarf said in a cold voice.

“I’m going to find the wolves and kill those wolves!”

With a yell of despair the man leaned over the pile of grain bags next to him and pounded the wooden post of the granary so hard it shook the whole house.

The dwarf squeezed the tip of his sword, he had a feeling that the male wasn’t quite in his right mind anymore.

Jace looked at the man, and then at the cottage where he lived, where an old woman was standing in the doorway looking this way, her body only barely steady.

She didn’t say anything, just stared blankly, and Jace got the feeling that maybe she wasn’t conscious because she was too old, and probably didn’t know what was going on over here.

It was probably his mother, or his wife’s mother.

This man relies on this farm to support two women and a child, in the middle of the night encountered wolves attack is indeed also very helpless, if the child was taken away, of course, he did not dare to chase far away.

If he got far enough away and the wolves circled back, they really might have to kill his whole family.

How is a confused old woman and a young woman with a new baby to be expected to fight off a pack of wolves at a time like that?

“My name is not Stormire.” The man whispered, “This is my wife’s family farm, she’s a Stormire, my name is Matt, Matt Fryer.”

He picked up the pitchfork from the ground again and said, “With this pitchfork I will kill all those wolves with you, all of them, to avenge my children.”

“We’re paid for this, Mr. Fryer.” Jess tapped him on the shoulder and said, “If you had followed through, wouldn’t we have to split the money? That won’t do. Just stay home and protect your loved ones. If we find a wolf, we’ll get rid of it for you.”

The man was now out of his mind from anger, bringing him there would likely only add to the chaos, and the two would have to find a way to protect him from getting hurt.

Flair froze for a moment, not knowing what to say for a moment.

He finally whispered, “If you find my children, or …… bones, relics, please help bring them back. I will pay you all extra, I can’t get much money out right now, maybe two silver coins. I know this is not much money for you mercenaries, but I sincerely hope that whatever is good, his clothes …… will at least give my wife an explanation.”

Jace said, “Two silver coins, that’s not bad. No matter how it turns out, you pull yourself together.”

The man nodded and said, “That’s what my wife said.”

Jess said, “Your wife is right, go back and take care of her, keep the farm looked after, and don’t let those wolves in at night again.”

“I know.” The man just turned his head, and then said as if he remembered something, “Those wolves …… I heard someone say that a den of wolves lives in the forest to the south.”

“How many wolves are in this litter?” Grid asked.

The man rubbed his eyes and said, “A hunter said that a group of four or five has been roaming the forest from time to time lately, and I alone don’t dare to look for them alone, so I can only ask for help from Shining Gold Town.”

After the man left, Grid looked at the man’s disoriented back and asked, “Move now, or wait for dawn?”

Jace slung his stick over his shoulder and said, “Let’s look first, just in case the kid’s still alive, and we’re still more likely to run into wolves at night.”

“But what are the chances of the kid surviving?” Grid asked.

Jace said, “No matter what the odds are, we need to get moving and find it soon, Grid.”

The dwarf said, “Don’t get your hopes up, just do what you can. Don’t let the child somehow live and we lose it.”

Jace let out a long sigh and said, “I have a feeling this is quite a bit more trouble than the reward says.”

“I have a similar feeling.” Grider said.

Searching for something in the Elwyn Forest was many times harder than doing a quest in the Elwyn Forest in the game.

Especially at night, Jace felt like everywhere he looked it was pretty much the same view, a dark patch of woods, the occasional call of an unknown animal, and when far away from the farm there wasn’t even the only markers left to tell where he was going.

There was a high ground in the center of the Twilight Forest, a pristine forest of huge trees gathered on the high ground, so it was possible to use the height of the ground and the shadows of the forest as a reference for direction.

But here, it’s really a double take, you can’t see anything.

“Have you ever hunted wolves before?” Jess asked.

“Haven’t hunted at night.” Grid crossed a patch of roots and said, “But I’m sure there are wolves around here, and not just because the man said so, but because ……”

He grabbed a bush, “Look at this.”

In the darkness of the night, Jace moved closer to Grid’s hand well enough to make out a little bit of silver wire on it by the dingy moonlight.

“Wolf hair?”

Grid nodded and said, “Now there’s good news and bad news.”

“Good news first.” Jess said subconsciously.

“Does it matter which one we hear first?” Grid said, “The good news is that there’s quite a lot of wolf fur here, and I’ve seen a lot of it already in the little time I’ve been walking around, which means we’ll probably have an easier time finding the den.”

Jace followed him up with, “The bad news is, there’s too much wolf hair.”

With a flourish, Grid said, “That’s just it, we’d better pray that all of these wolves’ fur has fallen from the cubs that followed the mother, if it’s a whole big pack, it could be bad luck.”

“Should we go back first?” Jess asked.

“It’s a bit late.” Grid looked up at the shadows of the moon leaking through the shade of the trees and said, “Why don’t we build a fire in place to drive away the beasts. I need to get some sleep first to prepare for the upcoming battle. You help watch for a while, and don’t worry, I’ll just take a short nap.”

Knowing that Grid always slept when he was tired, Jace nodded, and the two walked in the direction of the sparse forest for a while before Grid found a clearing to sit down, dug around, and said, “Oh no, I don’t have my flint, did I drop it on the way?”

“I have a little.” Jace took the box of flint out of the warlock’s pocket and handed it over, and Grid looked at his bag and said, “It looks pretty good this way, I mean your bag.”

This bag doesn’t look cheap, and it doesn’t look like something from the orcs, instead it looks like a package that some noble or archmage carries around, and it’s kinda cool to carry this thing in and out of the mage district.

Jace looked around for dry twigs, sticks, or whatever to use as fuel for the fire, and Grid cleared the ground and sat down and began striking flint with his dagger, blowing a mouthful of flint when he struck it twice with a little spark.

“Hey Jace, why don’t you come do this for a while, it’s not working too well.”

“Is the air too humid.”

Jace had just looked back and was seeing a pair of glowing eyes staring from among the bushes a dozen or twenty meters away behind Grid.